Oops I Did It Again

 

Saturday 20 May 2023

Jenny did a Larry this morning catching the 7am flight to Newman which meant getting up at 5am in the pitch dark having already been awake before the alarm stressing about whether it would go off and whether I would wake up for it.  No worries though and I was ready and waiting outside for Rami (L’s regular taxi driver) who turned up on the dot of 5.30am.  Out to the airport just before six so enough time to grab and coffee and sit down amongst a sea of yellow and orange high viz dressed men and women and watch the sky slowly lighten. 

A bit of a trek from Gate 17a across the covered tarmac highway to where the fleet of Airlink airbuses are past and then a quick dash across the tarmac in the cold morning air to the plane.  Nice short and smooth flight where I managed to watch about half of “Red Notice” whilst consuming a small ham and cheesy egg baguette for breakfast.

No Larry at the terminal to greet me but he had turned up by the time I had pulled my phone out to ring him – the airport was much busier than usual for Saturday and hence had taken him longer to park – and we were soon in the work ute and heading back to the units.  L left me there and headed back to work and, after dumping some stuff in the unit, I took the Cruiser and headed off to Woolies for the last minute fresh food shopping. 

Back to the units where I did the usual failing at spatial awareness skills in trying to fit two bags of groceries into already well stocked fridges and cupboards and, not long afterwards, L managed to finally escape his much busier than expected Saturday morning at work and get back to the unit to change and pack the last of his stuff into the car and van.

We hit the road out of Newman just after 11am and then drove north for a couple of hours until just before Auski roadhouse a truck flicked up a small stone and “SMACK” into the front window it went and a Larry saw two little star shaped cracks appear.  Not only was this incredible bad luck and enough to piss anyone off so early in the trip, combined with the fact the windscreen had also been chipped between Perth and Newman and just been replaced four days earlier, Larry justifiably just about blew his top.

We bought some hot chips (to console ourselves) and Supaglu (to console the windscreen) at Auski and did some repair work where L managed to cut his leg which topped things off nicely.  Last time where were at Auski at the beginning Jen tripped in the carpark and fell and bruised her leg so maybe we won’t come here again.

We continued north and L did some emotional eating of a packet of pillow biscuits but the remainder of the trip was uneventful and although plenty more road trains went past there were no more stones flicking up.  We had thought about trying to get to Eighty Mile Beach to catch up to Shaun but had kind of had enough of the day and by then it was getting near 5pm so we just drove to De Grey campsite which is as far as we normally make it from Newman and found a spot towards the back and away from most people just as the sun was setting.

We quickly made dinner (the usual De Grey offering of salad and squid rings) and then decided 8am was a reasonable time to go to bed and, after dropping our books on our faces a couple of times, lights out and fast asleep by 8.30.